Sarah Jane

by James Sallis

  Friday there was cleanup from the storm to do, and people were hard at it, so there wasn’t a lot else going on. I had cleanup of my own, reports, expense vouchers, overtime requests, but instead sat looking out the window at what was essentially a tiny bit of corner raggedly torn from a photo, wondering what one might deduce of the actual world from such a sampling. In a jail cell, for instance.

  I’d roused myself sufficiently to get up and pour a cup of coffee and was reclaiming my seat when a man walked by across the street. Within moments I was at the window. Solid build, with a low center of gravity and an easy gait that belied both. Nondescript brown hair gone shaggy, dark slacks, oversize white dress shirt with sleeves rolled. I was on my way out the door when Andrea, from the phone, signaled for me to wait. I was needed immediately, urgently, at Jewel’s GasPlus.

  KC, out on patrol, beat me there. He had one guy, head bloody, cuffed to the beer locker by the counter. The attendant had his right foot on the other one’s arm and his left on the guy’s neck. The restrained wrist had a huge gash with bone protruding.

  KC held up a .22, pointing to the cuffed one.

  “This criminal mastermind went back to the milk and dairy cooler. Hard to see from up here at the register. You have to crane your neck to look in the mirror by the ceiling, probably what they counted on. His buddy there came directly up to the counter. Mr. Tabrizi noticed they’d left the motor running.”

  I’d shut it down and grabbed the keys on my way in. Two teenagers had been hanging close by. No joy ride today.

  “The one at the counter had the gun. Mr. Tabrizi settled with him first. Blockhead saw that, tried to run, and fell, so he was next, while his bud was squirming on the floor.”

  Mr. Tabrizi handed me a baton. Well worn, grip rubbed smooth. Warm to the touch.

  “In my country I was for eleven years a soldier,” he said. “I will be under arrest now?”

  “You will not.” Holding up the baton, I told him I’d have to keep it a short while but would be certain it got safely back to him. He nodded, understandably still wary. In his country the ground could drop away beneath one’s feet between heartbeats.

  More paperwork, then. Arrest reports, prisoner login, personal item inventory. And a flagged bulletin to law enforcement agencies to inform all that we had in custody those we believed to be the convenience-store robbers. State authorities could come collect them at will.

  Two days, straight up. Thursday’s like making your way through a crowded bus that’s bottoming out on every pothole in town. Friday, you’re sitting in Cal’s chair wondering what the hell someone who looks just like Pryor Mills is doing in Farr, walking down the street across from your office.

  The name Pryor derives from the title given the head of a priory, of any religious collective, a monastery, an abbey, a nunnery. He’s an official lower in rank than an abbot. I looked it up back when he and Bullhead started hanging together because I hadn’t encountered the name before and had for the man who bore it an instinctive dislike that with time gave way to fear. Pryor was a fellow cop, Bullhead’s main wingman. Before that he’d been some sort of marshall or deputy; details were vague in the same way that explanations for his departure from that previous position were. You’d probably want to start the list with insubordination, excessive use of force, misogyny, and brutality.

  Some people make you uneasy, never meet your eyes. Once this man’s eyes locked on, they never turned away. Stories about him sifted in from fellow cops, folks on the street, ER nurses, high school kids, hardline gamblers. It was a simpler time back then for some, a world drawn with edges clearly defined. White males hadn’t been told or so much as imagined that they weren’t privileged by birthright. Power was power. To keep it, you used it. And Mills was smart, blood smart. He got things done, whatever it took. Pryor Mills didn’t walk across a room without purpose. And here he was, if indeed it was him, far from home and his seat of power, in the middle of what was for him nowhere. My nowhere.

  I was heading out the front door to brace him when Andrea waved at me to hold on, spoke briefly into the phone, then hung up. Linda from Sunny Slope had called to let us know that Mildred Whit was asking for me.

  For a couple of years I’d made irregular visits to Sunny Slope. During one of the town’s growth spurts, some entrepreneur believed Farr would go on expanding and built an entertainment complex out where the city limits had been projected to extend. City limits stopped short, construction halted, grass and weeds moved in. Finally a local church wrangled the site’s donation, boosted further contributions from the community, and established a retirement home.

  The Slope had called me in a while back to advise on security issues after their pharmacy was robbed. Better locks, better protocols, and a security camera dealt with that, and in the meanwhile, as I poked about the place, Mrs. Whit took to calling me Hilda, after her youngest daughter. I had a strong feeling she knew I wasn’t Hilda, if not initially then certainly further along, but we all tacitly carried on with the pretense. Each visit, her room was my first stop. So, after checking streets front and rear for Pryor Mills or his likeness, I headed out there. On my way I zigzagged through downtown, just in case.

  Since my last visit, one of the aides had spruced the room up with a flower vase, a knickknack or two, a new pillowcase and chair cushion, all in shades of the green in which Mrs. Whit often dressed.

  “Happy birthday, Mitty,” I told her. The charge nurse had cued me.

  “Another one,” she said. “I’m long out of toes and fingers. And patience.”

  “They do zip by, don’t they?”

  “Hummingbirds.”

  Right. They drop down for a moment, hover and are gone.

  “Of course they’re nasty little creatures. Always chasing each other away.” She took a bite of the tea cake I’d brought, a favorite. An aide had plated a slice, put the rest in the refrigerator for later. Crumbs tumbled onto Mrs. Whit’s chin. She looked down to watch them fall from there to her nightgown. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  We sat together as she finished the cake, drank half a cup of tea, and at length fell asleep. I told her I liked what she’d done with the room. She said that was Geri, the new girl, a smart one. Kind young lady even if she didn’t know how to spell her own name. She talked about a TV show she watched regularly, with all these characters who kept moving romantically together and apart in implausible permutations. From the sound and content of it I suspect it was nothing current, but a show she’d watched long ago.

  The next day there was a call from the Slope. Andrea passed the call to me, a nurse passed the phone to Mrs. Whit. Not a lot of breath behind her words. Pauses fell between and within. She wanted to tell me how much my Thursday visits meant to her. The visits weren’t always Thursday by any means, and hardly regular, just whenever I made it by, but in her mind, yes, Thursdays. Small ceremonies help hold our lives in place.

  In the background I heard others speaking. I said I’d be out to see her next week.

  She died that night about eleven.

  17.

  The body was found Tuesday by early-morning hunters out west of town. Been down for something more than a day, something less than two, Doc Gilley said. And damned if he could tell what happened, but there were multiple injuries. One hand was ruined. Recent wounds on head and face. And the man’s neck was broken. Clean and quick. A freak accident? I asked. A fall? Doc wore huge glasses that hovered over his face from eyebrows to drooping cheeks. Through them as he moved, you watched the world bend about him, distorted. Could be, he said.

  A .38, recently fired, was on the man’s belt. Over seven hundred dollars in his wallet and moneyclip.

  ID on prints came back before the autopsy was completed. A veteran policeman, Pryor Mills of Kern, New Mexico. KC made the call, speaking with the chief there, who reported Mills as on leave taking personal time. No, he had no knowledge that
Officer Mills was traveling out of state, or what his purpose in doing so might be. We couldn’t state conclusively what had taken place, KC said, not yet. We’d look into it further, of course, but at the present time considered it an accidental death. One final question. Officer Mills had no identification on him when found. Would the chief have any idea why that might be? And again a no—in a solid parade of them.

  KC assured the chief we’d keep him apprised, thanked him again, and hung up.

  I told KC he did well. However they’re staged, notifications are hard, and never get much easier.

  He nodded. “This job, every time you think you’ve got it covered, another train hits you.”

  He was right. The playbook sucks. You prepare and prepare, then end up making up most of the moves as you go along.

  Mrs. Whit’s funeral was that afternoon. Brag, KC, myself, and two caregivers from the Slope attended. One of the Slope employees had brought her kids. From the softspoken exchanges among them she was, I think, doing her best to explain what the service was all about. Brought up Catholic, KC was intrigued by the brevity and plainness of it.

  I knocked off early after the funeral, told everyone I’d be on call if they needed me but please don’t, and went home hoping to make up for lost time and serial no-shows with Sid. He couldn’t shake loose for an hour or so, he said on the phone, so I said I’d make dinner. I never quite realize how much I miss this till I’m back in a kitchen. It had been a long while since that happened, day after day filled with make-dos of apples, cheese, crazy quilt leftovers and (when I could summon sufficient energy and ambition) imaginative sandwiches. The moment onions started sizzling in the pan, my spirits grew lighter. A nice, fluffy omelet, I was thinking, finely grated parmesan inside. Or I could sauté some of that chorizo I had in the freezer, throw in spinach. Maybe a pasta with olives. And when had I last had my hands on fresh figs?

  Once you start . . .

  Sid’s arrival, complete with wine, brought me back. He held out the bottle, swathed halfway up its neck in a paper bag.

  “From a friend in Oregon who makes and bottles his own. He warns that the label may be the only remarkable thing about it.” Trees against a pale blue sky, bank curving gently down the way a hand might form in air a familiar shape, waters dark and still, patches of reflected sky caught within them.

  Actually, the wine itself wasn’t bad. Fruity and sweet on the front of the tongue, then fuller. Should age well.

  Not this bottle, though. This one went to its final rest as I finished cooking, with Sid sitting at the counter telling me about a case he was working on. Unable to decide, I’d wound up with two entrees going on the stove, so we decided one of them was an appetizer. “Truth, as ever, resides in what we choose to call things,” he said.

  Which was the tipping point of his case as well.

  Real Perry Mason stuff, he said, you bet, this lawyer gig. Witness in the box, judge peering down from on high, music low in the background as cameras hold their breath . . . when what’s really going on is, you’re sitting on your butt twelve to fourteen hours a day stalking statutes, precedents, prior rulings, relevances. For everything good you grab hold of, there’s something as not-good or worse a step or two further along. Oh the drama of it! The humanity!

  “Hmmmm. Perry Mason.”

  “A classic.”

  “For old farts fallen prey to nostalgia.”

  “Or a bright memory in the murky lives of lawyers who start out to save the world and end up assailed by doubt.”

  “Not only lawyers, Sid.”

  “Of course.”

  Food was done, and I downloaded it to serving platters.

  “Which one’s the appetizer?” Sid asked.

  “The one on the left.”

  “Your left or mine?”

  “Eye of the beholder.”

  “Well, in that case . . .” He spooned equal servings of each onto both our plates. We ate as he went on telling me about Charlotte Hoy, court-committed following the murder of her lover, Adele Fourier, nine years ago.

  “Her contention, her lawyer’s at any rate, is not only that she remains innocent of the murder as she has insisted all along, but also that, following treatment and release, by definitions implicit in the statements of her attending physicians she’s a different person, and asks that the court recognize such by severing any and all connections to her prior identity.”

  “This is something more than word play? And commas?”

  “I know, seems simple. Shazam, you’re a new person. But it begs fundamental issues.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “She won’t, either. This probably won’t ever be heard. But she, the lawyer—someone—is pushing hard.”

  “It’s not like she’s asking for absolution. What would she hope to gain?”

  “We don’t know. But seemingly small decisions can have vast, unforeseen repercussions.”

  “And you’re on the side of?”

  “It’s hard even to get a fix on what the sides are. Nobody’s been there before.”

  “Dragons and tygers. But I heard a we tucked away in there.”

  “I’m doing research for the judge who may be hearing this. Read, read. Scribble, scribble. Scroll, scroll . . . More appetizer?”

  “Pass. A bit more of the entrée, though.”

  “This poor spoon and I hover in indecision.”

  So I pointed.

  “I knew you’d come around.”

  Sid got up to make coffee for us.

  “The whole affair seems a bit fantastical.”

  He turned back from the sink, carafe half filled. “It does. One longs for the moment the drama drains away, Perry’s explained everything, and all is well with the world again.” He set up the coffee maker as I finished eating and carted dishes to the sink.

  “You haven’t heard the most fantastical part.”

  “Okay.”

  “The name she wishes to be known by is Adele Fourier. Her murdered lover’s.”

  That night I couldn’t sleep, finally got up and went in to look over the file on Pryor Mills. KC was on the swing to graveyard. About eleven he came knocking at my door, with a package.

  “FedEx dropped this off right after you left.”

  I thanked him and, when he lingered, asked if there was something else.

  “Guess there is, Sarah. This—”he pointed to the folders on my desk—“is heavy stuff. People wonder why you’re not taking lead on it.”

  “People, as in you?”

  “I’d be in the line, yeah.”

  “Any reason you shouldn’t be lead?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You’re ready for it?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Everything I see here’s solid, KC, one foot in front of the other while keeping watch off to the sides. A steady go.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “You think I was ready to run this show the day I fell into it?”

  “Yes ma’am, I do.”

  “If only I shared that confidence, then or now. Which puts you and me in much the same place.”

  He smiled and pulled out his phone to check the time, ignoring the clock on the wall behind him. “Thanks for that, Sarah. Time for me to do the midnight drive-round. Show citizens their police force is on the job.”

  “Brag just had the car serviced. Enjoy it while you can.”

  “Truth is, I may miss the rattles and hiccups. Two in the morning, they do help keep you awake.”

  “Maybe next time we can ask Sonny to leave a few of them in.”

  “Oh, they’ll be back soon enough.”

  The package had only a POB number as return address. Inside the padded envelope was one of those bound composition books with ruled pages and mottled black-and-white covers. I recog
nized the handwriting immediately.

  The world goes on out there. Interestingly enough, it

  does fine without you. This seems inevitable and at the

  same time not right at all. Every thought we carry around

  with us floats above its capsized reflection.

  Several pages further along:

  A voyage around my room, with its two chairs, table,

  bookshelves, narrow bed, would take four minutes, or forever.

  I rarely leave the room, go for weeks without hearing another

  voice, looking upon another face. Yet some of the most

  interesting times (who could possibly have guessed?) are those

  when I look around, perhaps at the gouged-out grout of the

  kitchen tile or the sagging window casement, or listen to

  the floorboards groan as I walk over them, and for a moment,

  for just one fantastic, exhilarating moment, I don’t know

  where I am.

  The dust of my history, of memory, lies on every surface.

  Back the only time in my life I ever watched TV, back

  in rehab, there were these same three or four supposedly

  grand ideas that got plugged in, like pivots, in damn near

  every script, every show.

  Do the right thing, yet another intense fool would say. So

  simple. As if a person would know. As if, right or wrong, or

  somewhere in between (that narrow strip of land we live on),

  there would not be disastrous consequences.

  And, in cop shows, all those scenes in interrogation rooms?

  Whenever the interrogateds say I don’t know what you’re

  talking about? They always do.

  Even as a child it seemed to me undeniable. Whatever it is

  – land, camels, slaves, gold, even knowledge – there’s onlyso

  much of it. If A has more, B has accountably less. The currency